A Local's Summer on Lake Redstone: The New Wake Rules, the North End Deck, and the South-End Cliffs
July 9, 2026
July 9, 2026
The lake you live on in 2026 is not quite the lake you lived on in 2025. On January 12, the Town of La Valle Board voted to move forward with an ordinance restricting wake-enhanced boats to more than 400 feet from shore, with no operation between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m., per the Lake Redstone Protection District. The ordinance still needs legal review and a public hearing before final approval, but the practical effect is already visible from any dock: the loud middle of the day is a smaller window than it used to be, and the quiet hours on either side of it are wider.
That is the shape of a Redstone weekend now. Everything else — where you eat, where you swim, when you paddle — moves around it.
Redstone has always been a working lake for pleasure boats. Kayakers writing at Wisconsin River Trips describe the summer weekend beach as "packed and a hectic zoo" by mid-morning, with wake bouncing off the sandstone shoreline hard enough to make paddling risky in the open sections. The new ordinance does not touch traditional powerboats or jet skis. It targets the surf-style wake boats specifically, and it does it with a time window rather than a depth minimum, since the Town Board tried multiple versions with depth restrictions but could not get a version approved by the Wisconsin DNR.
For residents, the practical read is straightforward:
If you own a shoreline that used to catch the afternoon rebound off the cliffs, you already know what this means for your dock lines. If you paddle, you have two solid windows a day where the water actually holds still.
The natural place to spend the middle of a Saturday, when the wake fleet is out and the water is busy, is off the water entirely. That is where Redstone's North End Tavern has quietly become the default answer.
The tavern sits on La Valle Road near the north-end boat landing, and there is limited boat parking near that landing with a short walk to the door. In the last two years the owners have added a covered deck out back overlooking the lake, expanded the outdoor area with more open space and picnic tables, and built out a party room and stage for live music. The current schedule, per Yelp, runs Tuesday through Thursday 4 to 9 p.m., Friday 3 to 9, Saturday 11 to 9, and Sunday 11 to 7. Closed Mondays.
Menu-wise, this is not a supper club pretending to be a resort. It is a tavern with smokers going out back:
The reason the tavern matters more than a menu recap suggests: it is the only lakeside kitchen on Redstone with the seating, the deck, and the music schedule to absorb the afternoon crowd that used to spread itself across the water. When the wake window closes at 6, the deck fills. That is a routine worth knowing before you are looking for a table at 6:15.
The other anchor of a Redstone weekend is the county park at the south end. Lake Redstone County Park runs about 30 acres, with a beach, playground, and a spillway roughly 800 feet from the parking lot, per Sauk County. An entrance fee is required. The park is the third public access on the lake and the only one controlled by the county.
The spillway is the reason to walk down. The dam was built in 1964 on behalf of real estate developers who created the lake to sell shoreline lots, and relative to the size of the creek below, the dam is quite tall, with water partly cascading over the natural rock face into what locals call the waterfall. A path and bridge lead below the dam to a photogenic pool. Signs prohibit jumping into that pool because of hazardous currents. People do it anyway. Do not be those people.
The fishing here is worth taking seriously. The DNR's 2022 comprehensive fishery survey documents an active stocking program: muskellunge at one large fingerling per acre in alternating even years, walleye that grow fast enough to reach 18 inches roughly a year after stocking, plus largemouth bass, panfish, and northern pike. Statewide, the daily walleye bag dropped from five fish to three on April 1, 2024, and the DNR has recommended raising Redstone's minimum length limit from 15 to 18 inches to protect the fishery. If you have not adjusted your creel expectations since 2023, that is the reason.
The southeast end is the part of Redstone that gets photographed most and paddled least. Red sandstone outcrops rise straight out of the water there, and the side gullies and narrow sections are already designated no-wake year-round. Local paddlers have long argued the southeast end has the best cliffs on the lake, and that the best time to reach them is early morning before the powerboat traffic starts.
The 2026 ordinance does not change the no-wake zones. What it changes is the corridor you have to cross to get there. Between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m., that corridor is functionally quieter, since the wake-enhanced boats that generate the reverberating shoreline chop are off the water. If you have a kayak in the garage and have been keeping it in the garage because the trip felt hostile, this is the summer to reconsider. Launch at first light from the county park beach, cross the main basin to the east shoreline, and you can be at the cliffs before the first tow rope hits the water.
Two housekeeping items worth knowing. First, any lake-wide no-wake declarations, usually triggered by high water, get announced on the Lake Redstone Facebook page and posted at the landings. Second, water clarity on Redstone is stained and turbid with occasional algal blooms, per the DNR. That is not new, and it is not a rebuke of the lake. It is the character of a shallow, agriculturally influenced watershed where runoff from properties around the lake accounts for roughly 40% of the sediment and phosphorus load, per the Protection District's own assessments.
A few dates worth holding for the rest of the summer and into fall:
The lake has always rewarded people who read its patterns rather than fighting them. The patterns are shifting this year, which is less a disruption than a rare chance to reset the routine: earlier paddles, later dinners, a covered deck for the loud hours, and a park at the south end that stays exactly what it has always been.
If you are thinking about how the shoreline market is responding to the new rules, or you own on Redstone and want a read on what your parcel looks like in a shifting-use lake, Your Local Real Estate Group tracks these currents for a living. Let's talk about your next move.
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